Tamara Fisher is a K-12 gifted education specialist for a school district located on an Indian reservation in northwestern Montana and past president of the Montana Association of Gifted and Talented Education. With Karen Isaacson, she is also co-author of Intelligent Life in the Classroom: Smart Kids and Their Teachers. Her hobbies include drawing, hiking, fourwheeling, and building houses. (She lives in a house she built herself.) In this blog, Fisher discusses news and developments in the gifted education community and offers advice for teachers on working with gifted students.

Webinars on Gifted Topics

Various organizations are once again offering an excellent selection of webinars on gifted education topics. I attended a few last year, and also made them available for interested teachers in my district, and found each to be a good learning opportunity. Just last week, a middle school Reading teacher who had watched one of them (the topic was advanced readers) commented on how much it had helped her understand the need for schools to make accommodations for students at the top of the testing curve, too. Here's a run-down of this spring's webinar opportunities.

NAGC's "Webinars on Wednesdays" series has various pricing options, including individual single webinar ($29), individual three or more webinars ($19 each), individual full package ($99), and site licenses ranging from $229 to $399. All of NAGC's webinar's take place on Wednesday evenings, but if you purchase the individual full package or site license options, you have full archive access for six months via their Live Learning Center. This spring's webinars include:

* Using NAGC's New K-12 Programming Standards to Design and Deliver Excellent Programs
* Differentiation Past, Present and Future: Enduring Models of Success
* Gifted Education Horizons: A Dialogue
* Using Technology in the Classroom to Differentiate Learning
* Strategies for Raising Achievement
* Using Children's Literature Differently: Supporting the Social/Emotional Learning and Well-Being of Primary Aged Children
* Addressing the Challenges of Underachievement
* Curriculum Models for Working with Disadvantaged Kids
* Making Differentiated Products Powerful in the Middle Grades
* The Road Less Traveled: Combining Creative Thinking & Differentiation
* The Problem with Praise: Encouraging Effort and Motivation in Children
* Twice Exceptional: The Curious Dilemmas that Occur at the Intersection of Gifted and Special Education

Each of these topics will be presented by recognized experts in the field and they typically include handouts, too, that are emailed to you. To register by mail, download the registration form here. To register online, visit the NAGC login page. NOTE: The NAGC website says the date for one of the webinars ("Strategies for Raising Underachievement") has been changed to March 23, but the downloadable mail-in registration form still lists this one at its original date. If you're signing up for this one, just make sure you make note of the correct date.

UC-Irvine's Extension Office is offering some free webinars on gifted topics this month. Feb. 16 will feature "Enriching the WHOLE Gifted Child" and Feb. 23 will feature "Collaborative Learning with Wikis" (which will include related differentiation information). Already passed but hopefully available at some point in their "Recorded Events" archive are "Finding Creativity in the Micromoments" and "Parenting a Gifted Child: Common Dilemmas and Practical Solutions." Here is a flyer with descriptions of each: 3rd Annual GATE Webinar Series Flyer.pdf

Scroll to the "Education" section in their Recorded Events archive and you can access at least eight recorded and freely available past webinars on gifted topics, such as "Is My Child Gifted," "Providing Social/Emotional Support to Your Gifted Learner," "Ending the Homework Hassle: Cultivating Scholarly Traits in Gifted Students," and "Gifted and Talented Instruction on a Budget."

An upcoming webinar available from SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) is "'You Can't Make Me Do It!' How to Encourage Motivation from the Inside" on March 24. For more details, visit this link, and to register, go here. Anyone registering for "SENGinars" has access to the recorded event after the fact (so even if you can't watch it live, you can still watch it). SENGinars cost $40. You can also purchase and watch a multitude of previous SENGinars. Available topics include "Intensity in Action: Understanding and Helping Gifted Kids," "Living in the Gifted Family," "What Your Kids Want You to Know: Perspectives for Parents and Teachers," and "Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults," among many, many others.

Happy Learning, everyone! :o)

Notice: We recently upgraded our comments. (Learn more here.) If you are logged in as a subscriber or registered user and already have a Display Name on edweek.org, you can post comments. If you do not already have a Display Name, please create one here.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.